NORPAC Helps House Hawk Attack Iran Deal

Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) is leading the charge in the House of Representatives to derail the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed between the P5+1 and Iran to limit the country’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from nuclear-related sanctions. Royce may have a powerful financial incentive, in the form of tens of thousands of dollars in bundled campaign contributions from a group aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This money would enable him to continue in his role as the House’s leading Iran hawk. Royce’s biggest campaign donor in the current and previous election cycle is NORPAC, a political action committee aligned with AIPAC, which led efforts to kill the nuclear accord.

Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Royce, approved the “Iran Terror Finance Transparency Act,” setting up the first of a series of expected showdowns over attempts to limit the White House’s ability to lift sanctions on Iran.

The legislation would give Congress greater oversight over the rolling back of sanctions. According to administration officials, the bill is an attempt to derail the JCPOA after opponents of the agreement, most of whom were Republican, failed to muster enough votes to block the agreement last year.

Even Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and one of a handful of Democrats who opposed the nuclear agreement, opposed the new legislation, saying, “I believe it doesn’t serve any purpose to have bills like this that are designed to kill the deal.”

The rhetoric from Royce, on the other hand, has only gotten more heated. During a Tuesday appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, he blamed Obama for the recent deterioration in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran after the Saudis started the year by executing Shiite leader Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. “They perceive we have tilted toward Iran and this has created problems in terms of our credibility in the region,” said Royce, who repeated the GOP refrain that the Obama administration is “leading from behind.”

Royce may believe that new legislation designed to constrain the White House’s ability to hold up its obligations under the JCPOA would improve regional stability. But he also has a valuable financial incentive to attack the Obama administration’s Iran diplomacy.

NORPAC directed $48,150 to Royce’s campaign committee in the 2014 election cycle (his second biggest donor, General Atomics, contributed $17,800) and $27,588 in the 2016 cycle (his second biggest donor, RIDA Development, contributed $13,500), according to data published by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The bundled campaign contributions might be a drop in the bucket for the AIPAC aligned group—AIPAC reportedly spent nearly $30 million fighting the nuclear deal—but it establishes NORPAC as Royce’s most valuable fundraising ally.

NORPAC’s campaign contributions to Royce might seem generous considering the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman won his 2014 midterm election by more than 30 points. But Royce certainly isn’t turning down NORPAC’s overtures. The group held a fundraiser last month for Royce in Teaneck, NJ, praising the congressman’s role as a “leading voice on Iran sanctions.”

Royce probably won’t touch on the foreign policy disasters hatched at AEI, or their role in setting the stage for the rise of the Islamic State, just as he probably doesn’t remind his allies at AIPAC that the group pushed for regime change in Iraq. Instead, according to the announcement, he will discuss “how the Islamic State and al-Qaeda can be defeated” and “the importance of American leadership to defend and advance freedom, security, and free markets both at home and abroad.”

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David Albright is the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, a non-proliferation think tank whose influential analyses of nuclear proliferation issues in the Middle East have been the source of intense disagreement and debate.

The new White House chief of staff, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, is anything but non-partisan or apolitical. For the deeply conservative Kelly, the United States is endangered not only by foreign enemies but by domestic forces that either purposely, or unwittingly, support them.

The prospects of Benjamin Netanyahu continuing as Israel’s prime minister are growing dim. But for those of us outside of Israel who support the rights of Palestinians as well as Israelis and wish for all of those in the troubled region to enjoy equal rights, the fall of Netanyahu comes too late to make much difference.

Rich Higgins, the recently fired director for strategic planning at the National Security Council, once said in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio program, that “more Muslim Americans have been killed fighting for ISIS than have been killed fighting for the United States since 9/11.”

President Trump seems determined to go forward with a very hostile program toward Iran, and, although a baseless US pullout from the JCPOA seems unlikely, even the so-called “adults” are pushing for a pretext for a pullout. Such an act does not seem likely to attract European support. Instead, it will leave the United States isolated, break the nuclear arrangement and provide a very reasonable basis for Iran to restart the pursuit of a nuclear deterrent in earnest.